The field of the invention relates generally to systems and methods for processing commercial financial transactions and, more specifically, to systems and methods for processing commercial financial transactions that includes processing transaction data and a check used for payment, wherein the check is provided to a customer that is approved by a check originator.
When purchasing capital, such as a vehicle and/or other types of equipment, a commercial customer may pay the purchase price of the capital in a variety of ways. For example, the customer may use cash to pay the full purchase price. Alternatively, the customer may use a check drawn on a bank account held by the customer. Either of these payment methods enables the customer to avoid entering into a financing arrangement with the merchant or a lender.
At least some commercial equipment purchases require loans to the customer. A typical process for approving a customer for such a loan requires the customer to spend valuable time on preparing loan application paperwork, which is submitted to a potential lender. The lender must then evaluate the loan request, which often times results in significant delays in getting the equipment. Furthermore, the loan paperwork often times requires the customer to disclose business information, such as profits and/or losses during a particular period and/or capital currently owned by the customer.
At least some lenders offer customer convenience checks that are linked to an existing credit account held by the customer at the lender. The customer presents a convenience check in the same manner as a conventional check. However, the funds used to repay the lender are not withdrawn from an account, as is done for a conventional check. Rather, the funds are credited to an outstanding credit account balance of the customer's credit account. These types of convenience checks are currently only used by customers having an existing credit account with the lender. Moreover, these convenience checks are tied to the personal credit of the customer rather than to the commercial credit of a commercial customer. Additionally, these known convenience checks fail to include security features.
At least some banks also offer partnership checks to existing credit account holders for use in consumer financial transactions between the account holders and one or more preselected merchants. However, such banks use systems that require consumers to take certain actions prior to using an issued partnership check, such as presenting the partnership check to the bank and/or calling to inform the bank of an acceptance of the terms of the partnership check. Further, such systems process partnership checks in the same manner as standard consumer checks, with the check being processed by the bank that issued the check after being presented at a merchant bank of deposit. Therefore, spotting fraudulent activity by either the consumer or the merchant may be delayed.
Accordingly, these known uses of convenience checks and partnership checks have significant limitations, and do not enable a commercial customer that is already approved for a loan amount to purchase a product from a merchant with a check having a plurality of security features included therewith.